I’ve a very confused and contradictory relationship with my homeland these days. Since leaving NI seven years ago I’ve always felt most homesick on and around 12th July. I miss the sound of flutes and drums in the evening, bonfire hopping around Belfast and Newtownabbey on the 11th night, counting the English and Scottish bands and the lodges from across the Commonwealth, and the sheer anthropological spectacle of the parades.
I’d vaguely planned to go home for the Twelfth this year; I haven’t stood in the traditional family spot at the top of Balmoral Avenue for several walks, and I wanted to show Andrea Ulster’s answer to Notting Hill. But instead I came to work in Singapore for a few months. I’m still proud enough, and have enough other t-shirts in the wash basket, to have worn my ‘Gerry Armstrong’ 82 World Cup retro shirt to Starbuck’s for my Saturday morning newspaper and coffee today. Yet it’s brilliant being in deepest Asia where a considerable number of people, even well-travelled and well-educated people, haven’t heard of Belfast, Northern Ireland, George Best, the IRA or Orangemen. They ask me if I’m English and I mostly answer yes. I do live there, afterall, and I assume they’re using it as shorthand for British.
Anyway, something else happens at this time of year, which July-by-July chips away at me and my perception of where I come from - Glentoran’s participation in European football. It sounds stupid, but it’s always obsessed me. I’ve travelled to see them lose in Israel, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway twice and the Republic of Ireland. Annually I can’t wait to find out our opposition and analyse the competition format and UEFA co-efficients for weeks beforehand. I draw up, revise and re-do lists of my preferred destinations, partly on criteria of adventure and partly on winnability. But we never do win, or rather, when we did win once in my era – against Allianssi of Helsinki in 2004 – I wasn’t there.
As with all Irish League clubs we lose, often heavily (embarrassingly so), because we’ve given up. We’ve got a huge inferiority complex. Our manager and players give the same interviews every summer – I came to Glentoran to be involved in European matches, we want to give a good account of ourselves, this club has got a great European tradition, we’re not just representing Glentoran but the Irish League, we’ll give it our best shot – but our results get consistently worse. This year will see one of the biggest massacres, possibly on a par with losing to Ajax 14-1 on aggregate in the 70s. We’re up against Maccabi Haifa, a team that beat Man Utd 3-0 in the Champions League group stages a few years ago. They’ll destroy us, completely and utterly. To rub in our capitulation over the last decade, they only beat us 3-1 on aggregate in the Cup Winners Cup in 1998. Three goals in 180 minutes; this time I suspect we’re liable to conceded three goals in each half of each game.
Now I’m all for the romance of the plucky underdog. But the adjective is the operative word, not the noun. I want to see us fight. I want to see us start pre-season training early enough to be match fit, to ban our players from missing the games due to beach and clubbing holidays in Ibiza, to prepare with more than knockabouts against Nortel and Sirocco Works, to outlaw the legendary piss-up that our players embark on after an away game, even after losing heavily and having the reverse fixture less than a week away. I want us to stop believing that just because they’re foreign they must be better. I want to see the Board and management put more emphasis on the Champions League than the Co. Antrim Shield. We won’t win the former and sometimes win the latter, but that’s not the point.
I want to see our supporters demand more. But they don’t. If anything, the surrender culture, the rotting decay in our game relative to the progress of other countries, stems from the supporters. They talk about “full-time” opposition as if that puts their players on a different stratosphere, rather than being poorly paid lads stuck at clubs on the fringes of the Baltic or somewhere near the Arctic Circle who train for eight hours a week compared to our players’ four. And besides, who said our players can only train twice a week?
I want to see foreign journalists stop writing articles about how we’re a team of car mechanics and factory workers and how our top striker smokes 40 a day. I want us to start showing a little self respect. Unfortunately, it’s not going to happen, and that eats away at me because Glentoran runs through my core and yet so does a need to achieve as much as I can, to fight against my limitations, and to make some kind of small impact in life. The two feelings just aren’t compatible – how can I support a club with such limited ambition, when even our supporters – and sports fans are normally bigheads and fantasists – couldn’t care less as long as we beat Linfield in a scrappy derby, in a crap stadium, every now and then?
Macabbi Haifa v Glentoran; UEFA Champions League Preliminary Round 2, first leg; Wednesday 15th July.
